> Having in mind to tell along several parts about everything we know about bees and beekeeping in general, a vast scientific territory that still holds secrets to unveil, I’ve resorted to several sources, the idea being to extract the most significant fragments. And here is what I have found. On the oldest existing documents, the Mesopotamian clay plates dating 2700 BC, there are lines quoting honey as a medicine. Approximately 1000 years later, in Egypt, Ebers’ papyrus circulated, one of the most important sources to learn some of the secrets of Egyptian medicine that also quotes honey and bee wax as medicine.

> In the Hindu civilization, honey and bee wax appear as medicine used to cure the sick, the discovery of honey being attributed to the Azwins, Sun gods. Most interestingly, the texts call Krishna and Vishnu often Madhumaskha, a derivative of the term bee – maybe in reference to the hard work and order that characterize these two gods. We go to Greek mythology, which admits that Jupiter was fed by the bees of Mount Ida that had produced the honey for this purpose. Northern mythology links honey to the god Odin. Out of it a drink is made that has the power to turn any mortal into a poet –

> Moldavian bees produce a certain wax of strong fragrance and very dark in color not to keep honey inside but against sunlight. Which is why, when beekeepers catch a new swarm with its queen, before bringing it into the hive, they cut holes and small openings into it. Before starting anything else, bees fill in the holes and cuts with the black wax I have mentioned because they can only work in the dark, and only afterwards they start working. Beekeepers take this wax together with the honey in due time: because it smells like amber and holds sunlight, they sell it at a deer price.

MARTA GIOGIA, writing in:
A Secret God Domesticated
Journal Timpul, 29/2001
http://www.apimondiafoundation.org/foundation/11_other_publications.html

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned 
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html